Page 36 of Puck Love

“The L word. Lawyers, longshoreman, lifeguards…”

“L-o-v-e-r-s,” I spelled out.

He chuckled lightly. “For fuck’s sake.”

“Whatever. I need help here. A little information. I gotta know if this is a one-off or if I’ve tripped into something I’d never known about myself. Believe me, I’m not happy you’re the one I need to consult. It’s fucking mortifying.”

Jake’s sleeping bag rustled as he propped himself on his elbow, mirroring my pose. “Sexuality is fluid and natural. Despite what society tells you, it’s not strange or unusual to be attracted to someone of the same sex. Nor is it odd for sexual awareness to crystallize later in life. There’re plenty of stories of men and women who were happily married to someone of the opposite sex for years before?—”

“Switching teams,” I finished. “Okay, but I’m thirty-three, not ninety-three. This is not later in life. And I amnotattracted to you.”

“Cool. Then you have nothing to worry about. Good night.” Jake snuggled into his sleeping bag and turned his back to me.

Fucker.

If my mind had been reeling earlier, it was on a runaway train now.

Jake was bi. He’d been with men…sexually. He wasn’t freaked out. This wasn’t new to him. He had experience, and he knew what he was doing.

Jake fucking Milligan had the upper hand here, and I had more of a problem with that than I did with the concept that I too might be bi. Yes, I was aware that was messed up, but that was how shit always seemed to go with us.

I was also aware that I’d never know for sure if I was bi unless…

“We have to do it again.”

11

JAKE

Thank God it was too dark to see clearly in the tent. I liked to think I had a good poker face and could keep my emotions under control, but Trinsky had a particular talent for getting under my skin. I could handle him on the ice all day long. I knew the rules there.

Here? Not so much.

“Good night,” I repeated tersely.

“All right. Then where would you suggest I go to experiment?”

Ugh.I smacked the pillow and turned toward him again. “I don’t fucking know. How about online?”

“Is that what you did?”

“No.”

“Jake…give me something. How do you know if?—”

I sat up in a rush and growled in frustration, enunciating every word of what was beginning to feel like a mantra. “I don’t fucking know! I kissed a guy in Barcelona when I was sixteen. I was on a family trip, traveling with my mom and my stepdad. The guy worked at the hotel pool and flirted with me every day. He was funny, good-looking, and he didn’t know anything abouthockey. That was enough for me. He was my experiment, and he proved what I’d suspected…I’m bi. Now will you fuck off and leave me alone?”

Apparently not. “So you had sex with a Spanish guy? Huh.”

“No, Ikisseda Spanish guy. And a British guy,” I added. “We actually did a little more, but that was a different trip.”

“Oh. Did you blow him…the British guy?”

“No, Mason.”

I swore I could feel his smile from a few feet away. It did something funny to my insides and made it difficult to maintain the mental distance I needed to get through another night with Trinsky.

Today had been a colossal mistake. Extremely hot albeit a big, bad idea.